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Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#431

Post by romeros »

bambax wrote: post #353

The reason why Musk eventually bought Twitter, when he did, and at the price he paid, was to avoid having to testify under oath in the lawsuit against him. He was going to be deposed, exposed, and in the end he was also going to lose and suffer the indignity of having to pay a high price for something he fiercely said he didn't want anymore. Better bite the bullet earlier than later. Now that doesn't explain why he w…

Or it could be that he was tired of Ideologues controlling the narrative and deciding what is right/wrong/misinformation/fake news etc for the rest of us.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#432

Post by Zigurd »

bambax wrote: post #353

The reason why Musk eventually bought Twitter, when he did, and at the price he paid, was to avoid having to testify under oath in the lawsuit against him. He was going to be deposed, exposed, and in the end he was also going to lose and suffer the indignity of having to pay a high price for something he fiercely said he didn't want anymore. Better bite the bullet earlier than later. Now that doesn't explain why he w…

It had to be a hell of a problem he faced should the suit move forward:

  Twitter is worth perhaps half the price Elon paid
  Tesla is worth half what is was when Elon started accumulating shares
IOW Elon used money that cost him 2X what is did last year to buy something worth 0.5X what he just now paid (assuming the check clears).

Even for the Richest Man Ever that will sting.

Innovation may take a back seat to cost cutting, like a basic LBO. Elon has creditors who lent him about $13B that got used to buy a thing worth half what was paid. What are the covenants on that? Twitter has about $4B in existing long term debt. Twitter free cash flow is negative, and 3X more negative than a year earlier. Where will debt service come from?

These are the mundane, apolitical reasons Twitter faces more headwinds now than before. Elon is much about doing more with less. He will need a lot of that to happen.

Twitter was badly run by several metrics.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#433

Post by koonsolo »

Ferrotin wrote: post #408
koonsolo wrote: post #388

I was a big Elon Musk fanboy for what he was able to accomplish on both Tesla and SpaceX. I had the impression that he was very genuine and really wanted to "save humanity". I ignored the crazy things he said on twitter. I think his accomplishments overshadowed his less favorable behavior. But after his tweets about Ukraine, it really started to dawn on me that his "save humanity" was not really save humanity, but ju…

So the whole “let’s not escalate to nuclear war” thing is what convinced you he didn’t want to save humanity.

No, the "Crimea clearly belongs to Russia" part, among other things. And submitting to Russia does not equal "saving humanity" in my book. Far from it in fact.

Also the "cost" of keeping Starlink alive in Ukraine, while it clearly has or will have a return on investment. (Ukrainians are already buying and paying subscriptions for that).

Edit: What was also disgusting was to ask what Kasparov did except tweet. And after it became very clear that he was protesting the Putin regime for many years already, Elon had the guts to up the ante and state that he's an "idiot". Sorry, but such things reveal what kind of person you are.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#434

Post by throwawaysleep »

Ferrotin wrote: post #408
koonsolo wrote: post #388

I was a big Elon Musk fanboy for what he was able to accomplish on both Tesla and SpaceX. I had the impression that he was very genuine and really wanted to "save humanity". I ignored the crazy things he said on twitter. I think his accomplishments overshadowed his less favorable behavior. But after his tweets about Ukraine, it really started to dawn on me that his "save humanity" was not really save humanity, but ju…

So the whole “let’s not escalate to nuclear war” thing is what convinced you he didn’t want to save humanity.

It was closer to “let’s not escalate to nuclear war by surrendering.”

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#435

Post by [deleted] »

bambax wrote: post #353

The reason why Musk eventually bought Twitter, when he did, and at the price he paid, was to avoid having to testify under oath in the lawsuit against him. He was going to be deposed, exposed, and in the end he was also going to lose and suffer the indignity of having to pay a high price for something he fiercely said he didn't want anymore. Better bite the bullet earlier than later. Now that doesn't explain why he w…

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#436

Post by jrockway »

Ferrotin wrote: post #408
koonsolo wrote: post #388

I was a big Elon Musk fanboy for what he was able to accomplish on both Tesla and SpaceX. I had the impression that he was very genuine and really wanted to "save humanity". I ignored the crazy things he said on twitter. I think his accomplishments overshadowed his less favorable behavior. But after his tweets about Ukraine, it really started to dawn on me that his "save humanity" was not really save humanity, but ju…

So the whole “let’s not escalate to nuclear war” thing is what convinced you he didn’t want to save humanity.

It's a little more complex than that. You probably don't want to send the geopolitical message that you can have whatever you want if you threaten to use nuclear weapons. If that's the case, then North Korea gets South Korea, China gets Taiwan, etc.

You can't just immediately concede to bullies, or all that will be left are bullies. That doesn't save humanity.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#438

Post by bushbaba »

rburhum wrote: post #373
bambax wrote: post #353

The reason why Musk eventually bought Twitter, when he did, and at the price he paid, was to avoid having to testify under oath in the lawsuit against him. He was going to be deposed, exposed, and in the end he was also going to lose and suffer the indignity of having to pay a high price for something he fiercely said he didn't want anymore. Better bite the bullet earlier than later. Now that doesn't explain why he w…

He implied in a few interviews that he wants to turn it into a WeChat version of the west. Doesn't 200M+ daily active users opens up that door.

You assume 200M+ human daily active users. A large portion of Twitter's DAU & MAU are bots.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#439

Post by jonny_eh »

_fat_santa wrote: post #312
cutenewt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

The problem isn't the bots, the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts. I say open up the API and let people make whatever bots they wish, but if you tweet through the API then you get a big "BOT" tag next to your username on the feed.

I tweet using the iPhone app Tweetbot. Would my tweets be marked as a bot?
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